N:RTK. 5: Finally Face to Face.

Disclaimer: This fanfiction is a creative work inspired by the Naruto universe created by Masashi Kishimoto. It is not intended for profit or to infringe upon any copyrights associated with the original series. All recognizable characters and settings belong to their respective creators.

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Summary of the previous chapter –

We see a training montage that spans the entire 9 months from his awakening to the current date, where he finally meets up with Mito. He does physical training mostly in the beginning, but then transitions to fuin-jutsu training after he saves enough money to buy the supplies.

He nearly gets himself killed, but luckily opens the first of the 8 inner gates secret technique and saves his life. Not only that, but he even goes on to create his own original seals that change his fighting style and allow him to circumvent his weakness.

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Last time on Naruto: Road To Kage. Chapter 4: Nine Months of Hell - His Masterpiece –

"So you're the kid who broke the seal, causing Tobi-chan so many sleepless nights."

He opened his eyes to see three people in front of him; one of them wasn't in his best-case scenario plan. But maybe it would be better this way; after all, the man was known to be more easy-going between the two.

"If I said yes, would I be in trouble?" He asked with a knowing smile.

Now continuing –

~ A few minutes ago ~

It was a nice weekend; she was coming back from hot springs with Tsuna-chan and Hashi-kun. When something interesting caught her eye, it was a stall someone had deliberately set up right outside their clan compound.

They were careful to not block the path or be too close to the compound so as to call for grounds of being driven out forcefully.

But it was still set up close enough that almost anyone coming from the direction of the hot springs will have to cross it if they want to head into the senju compound.

As she drew closer, she saw the board of the establishment; it was just paint over a wooden plank. But she could feel the strokes had been put down by someone who understood fuinjutsu and didn't just copy it.

It read: Best Explosive seal in the world, even better than the Uzumaki's of the same rank.

A bold claim, one that brought a smile to her face. Oh, how much fun she would have to prove them wrong; after all, when it comes to seals, no one beats the Uzumakis.

She saw that it was just a kid, he wore a light blue yukata and looked very cute in it with his snow-white hair, that reminded her of Hashi's brother but even softer and fluffy, almost like a cloud.

It made her just want to hug him but she reigned in her motherly instincts.

'Hmm, Tobirama is coming as well. Huh, is Hashi-kun saying something?' She thought to herself as she looked at her lovable fool and saw him sign something to her that almost made her soul leave her body.

'What?! This kid is drawing small amounts of nature chakra?!' The only reason she wasn't freaking out was because the kid looked completely in control and calm. So she could guess that he probably had it in control.

.

..

.

Meanwhile, a minute earlier, Hashirama, who was just enjoying the walk with his previous tsu-chan and Mito, suddenly felt a flux of nature chakra in the air.

It was very weak, but it was there. His mind immediately went into overdrive, as any Sage mode user was a kage level opponent and he had to protect his granddaughter.

So, he immediately closed his eyes and instantly entered sage mode himself to see where this disturbance was coming from. But what he saw almost made him drop his sage mode in shock.

'That five-year-old is a sage?!' He exclaimed in his head as he felt the nature chakra being slowly sucked in by something, probably a seal, into his chakra pool.

He exited sage mode and immediately signed about his findings to his wife. She would know what to do with the kid, as his gut told him that he was most likely here to meet her.

They walked closer and met up with Tobirama, who was coming from the other side, as they converged near the stall. He told his brother about his findings, while Mito decided to just talk to the kid and see what he wanted.

"So you're the kid who broke the seal, causing Tobi-chan so many sleepless nights." She said as she stood before the child.

It broke his concentration, and he opened his eyes, to reveal the most beautiful pair of eyes she had ever seen in her life. His eyes were striking and distinctive, with vibrant blue irises that seemed to glow with intensity.

'Was it the side effect of a seal?'

"If I said yes, would I be in trouble?" He asked back with a knowing smile.

"Nope. It's not like you broke a law." She replied with a grin stretching across her face.

The kid breathed a sigh of relief at her reply.

"So, why are you here kid?" She asked again, intrigued by him.

"I am here to sell my seals." He replied with a sunny smile.

"You made them?" She asked, to push the conversation towards the seals.

.

..

.

"Of course, it's my original." He easily admitted that, as it wasn't something he was gonna hide from her.

After all, all this prep and all that hellish training were for this very moment, so he could stand face-to-face with her and impress her with his creations.

Why? Well, because she was going to be his ticket to power and security. If all went according to plan, she was going to be his teacher.

It was the answer to escaping the Ninja life and being bound to the whims of a hokage could just send him on a suicide mission.

Or even just straight out have your character assassinated if they were considered you to be an obstacle to their nefarious plan. R.I.P Hatake Sakumo.

On his trip around the village, he eventually passed by the Senju clan compound, and a plan took root in his mind from a question he asked himself.

'What if the strongest known fuin-jutsu user in Naruto were to be my teacher?'

Here he was, nine months and one hellish training montage later, ready to blow their minds with his ingenuity and get his ticket to skip on becoming cannon fodder in the yet-to-start First Great Ninja War.

"Show me!" She asked enthusiastically.

Her words reminded him of a joke, and he thought to use them to see what her temperament was like.

"Ma'am please not here." He replied as he hugged himself, acting all shy.

"You!" Her hair immediately flew in different directions, which reminded him of Kushina, as she was instantly angered, yet she held back when she hit him on the head.

"Ouch," he said as he rubbed his head where she had hit him.

"That's what you get for making a crude joke to your elders."

He just laughed and apologized, "Sorry, but it was too good of a chance to pass up."

His apology seemed to ease her anger a bit as she introduced herself. "I am Uzumaki Mito. What's your name, kid?"

"Satoru. So.. are you gonna buy any seals?" He asked back to normal, hoping to sell a few of these to her. Even though he was a prodigy with 

"I will.. but before that, let me tell you something, Satoru.." She said as she knelt halfway and came at eye level to him, "I hate it when people lie to me."

"Now, saying that your seals are even better than those of an uzumakis is a very bold claim to make; do you think you can back it up?"

"Of course. I tested it myself." Upon seeing the criticizing look on her, he decided to tell her a bit more, or she might scold him for doing something so reckless. 

"Obviously I used a delayed trigger and got out of place long before the seal even triggered." He explained as he started packing up his stuff.

"It was you, wasn't it, the one who destroyed that cliff face on the academy training." Tobirama said finally as he stepped forward to inspect his custom-made explosive seal.

"Absolutely not; I was at home when that incident happened." He replied with his back to them, so that it would be easier to lie and not get caught. 

"Satoru, what did I just say? I don't like it when people lie.." Mito tried to criticize him but he had already thought this through.

"To you." He replied.

"What?" She asked back, surprised by how comfortable he was speaking his mind despite knowing who they were.

"I said to you, well I didn't lie to you. I lied to Tobirama-sama." He said, taking the nails out of support planks that were holding up his banner.

"Hmm, Tobi-kun it looks like you've grown quite fearless, huh? You even had a kid behind our backs and didn't even tell us about it."

Tobirama sputtered at the accusation but before he could say something in his defense our protagonist spoke up.

"Mito-sama, I am an orphan. I don't know him personally, but Tobirama-sama doesn't seem like the kind of person who would abandon his own family. Let alone his own son."

"Anyways, I am done packing up. Do you guys have a place in mind where we can test my seals without drawing too much attention?" He asked as he stored all the materials he used to create his stall inside a storage seal.

He turned towards them and then dusted off his yukata.

"We do; come with me." She said as she led him towards the senju clan compound.

"Satoru, what was the actual reason behind you coming here and setting up this stall?" She asked again, wanting to know if she really was his target as she had deduced.

"I wanted to impress and ask you if you could be my teacher in the arts of fuin-jutsu." He replied directly, not hiding his intentions from her.

"Hey, who are you to ask my granny to be your teacher? Do you even know who she is?" Little Tsunade harrumphed as she crossed her arms.

"I know more about her than even you might, little one." He replied with a smirk as he gave her a side glance.

"But I think the right thing to do is to first introduce yourself before you ask someone for theirs. Don't you think so?" He said with his fingers interlaced behind his head.

"How can you not know who I am?" Tsunade replied indignantly.

"From your closeness to Mito-sama and the First, I can already guess who you are. But remember, young Miss, always introduce yourself first. As it's only polite, or you weren't even taught manners."

Mito caressed her head, calming her down. She whispered something into her ear, which caused her mood to improve.

She turned towards him and introduced herself. "I am Senju Tsunade. It was nice to meet you. Who are you?"

"It's a pleasure meeting you, Tsunade-san. I am Geinshīru Satoru, an academy trainee and a self-taught proficient fuinjutsu user." He said, as he introduced himself.

"Geinshīru Satoru.. hmm.. it's a mirrored name.." She muttered to herself.

"Enlightenment in the Art of Seals." Tobirama spoke up finally.

"Yup, it's a name I recently chose for myself." He replied, acknowledging his answer.

"Huh?" Tsuande was confused as to why someone would want to change their name.

"Why did you do that, Satoru?" Mito asked intrigued.

"Because I wanted a fresh start after I found my calling. I was dropped off at the orphanage as a baby, with just a name." Satoru decided to give them a little backstory about himself.

"There were likely two scenarios here. Either my parents didn't want me or they got rid of me; this is most likely the case."

"Or they were under some kind of pressure from a third party and had to give me up. So that they could hide my existence."

"Either way, keeping my old name would be foolish, especially after I found my calling."

"You're calling?" Tsunade was interested in knowing more about the older kid.

"Calling means having a purpose in life. Not everyone is lucky enough to find it, but when they do, It changes their lives completely. I know mine did." He said with a happy smile.

"How did you find it?" She asked again.

"Well, it had been over a month into the start of my first year at the academy, and I just couldn't find even one thing I was better at than my peers." He explained the backstory that he had devised for himself to cover up his sudden transmigration and change in behavior.

"I was painfully average, right in the middle of the pack. So, I thought I would go to the academy library and see if there's a ninja art that I am suited for; that can be my thing."

"So, then, what happened?" She asked with stars in her eyes.

"Well, I read through them all," he said as he counted them out on his fingers.

"Ninjutsu, meh. I couldn't do much in it as my chakra pool was too small."

"Genjutsu - I had some talent in it, as I was excellent with chakra control. But upon further reading into the subject, I was faced with another wall."

"What was it?" Tsunade asked, engrossed in his tale.

"I read that, at higher levels, people can just shrug it off with a simple KAI! And the only way to circumvent this problem is to have more chakra than your opponent and better control as well."

"Now control, I was confident in. But as I already told you, my chakra—"

"Your Chakra Pool is small. But how small is it?" She was interested in this new guy she met, who wanted to learn under her grandma.

"How?.. Hmm, can I touch your hand?" He asked in return, trying to gauge just how big her Chakra pool was in comparison to him.

"Hmm, okay." She gave her consent after seeing her grandma nod to say that it was okay.

He stopped walking and grabbed her wrist and pulsed his chakra through her, pinging it off of her own chakra to get a read for her chakra pool.

"It looks like you had yours just recently unlocked." She excitedly nodded her head in agreement. 

"Well, your chakra pool is around twice as large as mine, and that is after me training for 9 months like my life was on the line," he replied as he got a little down at her natural advantages over him.

"So, what about your calling?!" She asked again when she saw that he had fallen silent.

"Oh yes. Sorry, I got lost in my thoughts." He woke up from his stupor.

"Let's keep moving. I wouldn't want to keep Mito-sama waiting." He said as they began walking again and then continued his tale.

"After genjutsu I read up on iryo-ninjutsu but was again faced with the same problem."

"And when I finally read the book about fuin-jutsu, the requirements and the problems were the same."

It was at this moment that Mito perked her ears, eager to learn how he had learned fuin-jutsu.

"But for some strange reason, I found that I could easily understand the complex seals. I read through the entire book in one go."

"I had skipped lunch and didn't even realize the passage of time, so single-mindedly focused I had been on the book."

"After that day, I decided on my new name and devoted almost 90% of my training time to learning fuin-jutsu. I did that for around 9 months, and here we are." He finished his tail as he shrugged his shoulders.

"So how good would you say you are at it?" Tsunade asked, wanting to know where he exactly stood. 

"Well, according to the book I read. The measure for being called a fuin-jutsu master is to be able to create one's own original seal."

"I would say I am well past that rank, as I have created multiple originals of my own."

That statement made Mito's eyes widen in disbelief, as the kid was only 6 years old, and he claimed to have already made his own seal and more than one at that.

After finally reaching the training grounds, she turned around and looked at him. "Okay, Satoru, it's time to show what your seals are truly capable of."

"Well, I was selling explosion seals, so would it be okay to just display that here?"

"Yes, of course, go ahead."

"Are you sure, mito-sama? It's highly destructive. It will cover a big area of this training ground, and everything will just turn to ashes."

"And I really cannot afford to pay for any damages," he said, pulling his empty pockets to gesture at his tight finances.

"Don't worry about the damages, just let loose, I want to see just how much better your seals are to an Uzumakis." Mito replied with her arms crossed in front of her ready to see just how much more powerful his explosion seal was gonna be.

He hummed in return while tilting his head in thought, and as he did, a clear blue sky greeted his view. His gaze wandered further around him, taking in the vastness of the training ground on which he stood. 

As far as his eyes could see, he was surrounded by trees and shrubs, but they felt different. Maybe it was because he was slowly absorbing nature's chakra, but he found that he was able to feel it in his surroundings.

Though he could only do so when it was only when it was present in such a dense amount. To his senses, the nature chakra present in that particular training ground was 5 times anything found in a normal environment.

He could easily guess that this was the personal training ground of Hashirama. Now all he had to do was ensure that his demonstration had as few people as possible to see it. 

It was so that the number of people who knew his true capabilities was only a handful. Thankfully, it was only Tsunade, Mito, Hashirama and Obama were present for the current demonstration.

"Okay," He replied with his calculations done.

He stepped forward a few meters in front of them and came to a stop. His hands were covered in smoke as he summoned the explosive seal attached to a kunai from the storage seal that he had inscribed on his palm.

He turned around and showed the seal to Mito one last time and then chucked the kinai at an angle so that it would land around 100 m from their position.

He turned to them, raised his hands and said, "This is the lowest tier explosive seal." He covered his ears and continued explaining.

"Normally an explosive seal of that tier will only cover an area of around 5 meters."

"Due to the modifications that I made to the seal, it now covers an area of around 50, and the intensity of the flames is at least three times that of the normal one."

"The fire burns so hot that the flame turns blue."

"As his explanation came to an end, they heard an earth-shaking explosion as the area in front of them was covered in a huge explosion that then burned with an angry blue flame, which seemed like it wanted to devour the entire forest."

"Tobi-kun, take care of the damage, would you?" Mito asked, slack-jawed, as she just stared at the damage dead Satoru's explosive seal had caused.

"Satoru, can you tell me how your seal is that powerful?" She finally asked unable to hold in her curiosity.

"Well it became that way after I found the trick to circumvent my problem of having a small chakra pool."

"At first, I had just made a storage seal that would store my chakra, and I would feed my Chakra into it, and over time the seal would get primed."

"But it would take way too long, and I wanted to find another way around it. So I thought, What if I could use the Chakra that is already in the air?"

"So I reverse engineered a Chakra absorption seal that is used to weaken enemy Ninjas that are taken captive," he explained casually, like he had not just done the impossible at such a young age.

"Are you sure he is not Tobi's son?" Mito whispered towards Hashirama.

"I don't know.." Hashirama replied as he looked shocked at him.

"Altering the Sealing Matrix so that it would absorb the nature chakra in the air rather than the normal Chakra was a hassle, but I eventually figured it out as well, and that is how my personal best creation was made. I named it the [Fake Sage Seal]."

"I named it that after learning about the sages from a history book that talked about a legendary figure named the Sage of the Six Paths."

"Wait, so you can use nature's chakra?!" Hasirama asked, a little stunned, by the kid who had already figured out that he could use sage chakra for more than just enhancing his body.

"Yes, it is how I enhance the effectiveness of my seals." Satoru replied that it was just a normal, everyday thing for him, which it actually was.

"After some experimentation, I found that nature chakra enhances the capabilities of any ninjutsu that it is used to power."

"And it also reduces the requirements of the amount of chakra that would be needed to activate or use Jutsus but only if your chakra control is good enough."

"But I completely substituted the need for chakra control with an array of balance matrixes that take my already stored chakra and mix it with the nature Chakra in the perfect amount so that senjutsu chakra is made." 

"Only the amount needed to prime the seal is made and the excess nature chakra is released back into the environment."

"Satoru, you've already impressed me, but to gain the right to learn from me, you need to show me just how good you are at using seals in a fight." Mito spoke in a serious tone, like it was a non-negotiable condition.

"Okay, I don't mind but who will I be fighting?" He asked nonchalantly as he had already expected her to ask him to fight someone to showcase his capability.

"You would be fighting one of Tobi-kun's

students." Mito replied after thinking about whom she should make him fight.

"Respectfully, Mito-sama, I refuse." Satoru bluntly replied back, surprising everyone present.

"Huh?" She was surprised at his rejection.

"Why?!" She couldn't help but ask him.

"I don't want to display my talents and skills in front of someone else. Especially someone who I don't trust."

"The fewer people know that about me and what I am actually capable of doing, the better." He said explaining his viewpoint.

"So you don't mind fighting me?" Mito asked, trying to gauge his reaction.

"Of course not. It would be much better, actually, if I fought someone of your caliber." He answered happily, excited to take the opportunity to test himself against the best.

"Because I know that you would be able to easily take on any damage that my seals will do. So I will be able to go all out against you, unafraid of accidentally killing you."

She nodded at his conjecture, thinking that it made sense, and then turned towards her husband to discuss the situation.

"Okay then Satoru, I agree to your terms, no outsider will be called in. But I need you to fight the first hokage and go all out to show me what you truly are capable of."

His eyes widened when he heard that he would get to fight the first hokage. Even though it would just be spar and he would be severely holding himself back. Just getting the honor to fight this legendary figure excited and made his blood boil. 

"Think of it as you're staying behind to cover the retreat of your team, and you are up against an elite chunin level opponent." She said, explaining the scenario of the fight.

"Understood." He replied with a huge smile on his face.

— To be continued…

In the next episode of X̶-̶M̶e̶n̶ '9̶7̶

Cough* *Cough*

I meant in the next chapter of Naruto: Road to Kage – Chapter 6: Sage vs Sage, Fake vs Sun.

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Word Count: 3,781 words (without the author's notes and disclaimer.)

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{Closing Author's Note: Thanks for reading, this is part of my exclusive works that was only available here on my pat. reon and ko- fi but only that I have a reserve of chapters I'm finally releasing it on Webnovel.

You'll be able to read upto chapter 17 right now.

Anyways, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, this is bye for now but I will be back in 2 hours with the H:HHS chapter till then. I hope you have a beautiful day}